The Human Elements of an Alien Encounter - Presentation by Lois Rosson

The Human Elements of an Alien Encounter: Archiving Budd Hopkins and the Alien Abduction Narrative at the American Philosophical Society – Presentation by Lois Rosson

In August of 1964, Budd Hopkins reported a daytime UFO sighting to the National Guard and significantly altered the future course of his life. Hopkins, at the time a well-known New York painter associated with a high-profile clique of Abstract Expressionists, grew increasingly preoccupied with the plausibility of extraterrestrial encounters after the sighting. He spent roughly the next fifty years experimenting with new research formats, interviewing hundreds of people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens. By the 1990s, Hopkins had published several books, collaborated with Hollywood on film and TV adaptations, and made periodic rounds on well-known talk shows.

This lecture examines Budd Hopkins’ work and its impact on the UFO abduction narrative in American popular culture. Hopkins recorded thousands of interviews with purported alien abductees over the course of his career, shaping many of the cultural tropes associated with depictions of extraterrestrial life. This talk sets aside debates over the existence of alien visitors, focusing instead on how the abduction phenomenon represents novel intersections between the physical sciences, psychiatry, popular media, and American folklore. The bulk of Hopkins’ tapes were recently acquired by the American Philosophical Society, a Philadelphia research library that functions as the country’s oldest learned society. This lecture, in addition to featuring never-before-used material fresh from the APS’s collection, will focus in part on the acquisition of controversial material into a preeminent research institution and examine recent debates over the term pseudoscience in scholarly circles.

Bio: Lois Rosson is a historian of science and technology based in Los Angeles. Her current book project traces the impact of Los Angeles' art and special effects industry on the look of the space environment in planetary science and popular culture. She has held the Guggenheim Predoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, and the Octavia E. Butler Fellowship at the Huntington Library. Her work has been supported by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, NASA, the Berggruen Institute, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.

Special thanks to: Bernardo Rondeau.

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